The Intuitives(13)

Rush felt confident he could win it either way, but he was willing to take any competitive edge he could get. The sponsorship wasn’t just a couple of free controllers and a pat on the back. This was a genuine, pro team, paid to attend gaming conferences all over the world and play matches in front of live audiences of thousands—even tens of thousands—and far more over the televised broadcasts. The online streaming income alone represented a small fortune.

“Don’t forget us when you’re pro, man,” Snark said, his voice betraying a hint of genuine concern. At seventeen years old, Rush had already been playing with the same four guys for three years. Snark was his oldest gaming friend. He was good, but he wasn’t as good as Rush, and they both knew it.

“Naw, man,” Rush said. “You know I won’t. Ima send you guys my swag. You’ll see. T-shirts, games, controllers, snacks… Ima hook you guys up.” He meant it, too. Nobody had ever had his back like Snark, Wingman, Fuego, and Stryker.

“Damn straight you hookin’ us up, Rush. But I ain’t takin’ no T-shirts. I’m takin’ your women, like it or not, bro.” This last was Fuego, always the first to lighten up a serious mood.

“Yeah, OK. We’ll see about that,” Rush said, laughing.

“Yeah, we will, bro. You just wait!”

“Fuego, only girl of mine I’m lettin’ you have is my sister,” Rush shot back.

“Thought you didn’t have a sister,” Stryker chimed in.

“Exactly.”

And with that, they all dissolved into laughter. They won their match easily, and it was time for Rush to queue them up for another.

“Let’s play ‘Light It Up,’” Rush suggested.

“Seriously?” Snark complained.

“Again?” Fuego added a few curses in Spanish, just for good measure. HRT Alpha: Year One offered thirteen different game modes for player-versus-player beta matches. Rush enjoyed most of them, but ‘Light It Up’ was his favorite.

“Fuego, you just said yesterday you liked it,” Rush countered.

“‘Like’ is Mexican for ‘hate,’ bro,” Fuego quipped, and Rush laughed. That was Fuego’s personal code. If he said a word meant something in Spanish, he was telling you the truth. If he said it meant something in Mexican, he was making a joke.

“I’ll play whatever,” Stryker said, as he always did.

“Wingman?” Rush asked.

“What’s my name?”

“Wingman,” Rush said, grinning.

“And why am I the Wingman?”

“’Cause you always got my back,” Rush answered. “‘Light It Up’ it is!” He smiled as he put them in queue for another unranked match. The team was quiet for a while, waiting for the system to find them a game, until Stryker finally spoke up, breaking the silence.

“Did you guys all take that test today?”

Stryker was the quietest of them all. He rarely said anything, and when he did, it was because it was gnawing at him. Rush knew one of the main reasons Stryker stuck with them was because they didn’t mind him being so quiet—and because they would always talk to him anyway when he needed to get something off his chest. So when a few long moments passed without a response, Rush stepped up to the plate.

“I think we all did, didn’t we? I heard it was in every school in the country.”

“Not me, bro,” Fuego offered up. “I’m home-schooled.”

“If by ‘home-schooled’ you mean ‘illegal,’” Snark replied. It was common knowledge among the team that Fuego was, in fact, an illegal immigrant whose family did not send him to school for fear that he might get picked up by Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

“That’s what I said,” Fuego replied easily. “‘Home-schooled’ is Mexican for ‘illegal.’”

Rush couldn’t help but laugh. “Well, everyone else took it. Why, Stryker? What’s up, man?”

“It was weird, right?” Stryker said.

“Yeah,” Snark and Wingman both agreed.

“I wouldn’t know,” Rush said.

“I thought you just said you took it?” Stryker asked.

“Well, I kinda did, and I kinda didn’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Snark demanded.

“Means I read the first three questions, decided it was stupid, and just filled in random blanks after that for the first two sections,” Rush admitted.

Snark laughed so hard he finally toggled his mic off to keep from splitting their eardrums.

“You didn’t,” Wingman objected.

“Truth,” Rush said.

“Wow,” was all Stryker had to say.

“Hey, guys, wait a sec,” Rush interjected, hearing his mother calling him down to dinner. “I gotta go eat. Meet back in twenty?”

“Yeah.”

“OK.”

“Sure.”

“Sounds good.”

“Awesome. See you then.” Dinner shouldn’t take long, and then he could get back to practicing for August. Come hell or high water, he would be ready.





6


Mackenzie



Even now, several months after they had moved in, Mackenzie Gray hated the carpet in the upstairs hallway. This was due largely to its color, which was ironic, she thought, given her name. But she didn’t hate all gray things, or even all gray carpets. It was just this particular carpet, this precise shade of gray, that she found so intolerable.